Pierre Barbizet was born in Arica, Chile, in September 1922, the son of a French industrialist. His mother, a violinist, introduced him to the piano and to chamber music when he was six. The family moved to Santiago and later to France, where he attended the Lycée Thiers and studied at the Marseille Conservatory before entering the Paris Conservatoire, taking his premier prix in piano in 1944 in the class of Armand Ferté, along with diplomas in music history and chamber music.

In 1948 he won first prize at the international competition in Scheveningen, near The Hague, where he met the violinist Christian Ferras. Their duo lasted until Ferras’s death in 1982 and became one of the defining French chamber partnerships of the period. Barbizet also played with the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, the pianist Jean Hubeau and the Parrenin Quartet.

In 1963 he became director of the Marseille Conservatory, holding the post for twenty-six years until his death. He was made Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 1981. Barbizet died in Marseille on 19 January 1990, aged 67.

The partnership with Christian Ferras is what Barbizet is chiefly remembered for. The two recorded the complete Beethoven violin sonatas for EMI in 1958, together with works by Brahms, Debussy, Fauré and Franck, and the duo’s thirty-four years made it one of the longest sustained violin-and-piano collaborations in post-war France.

As a soloist his most distinctive contribution was to Emmanuel Chabrier, whose complete piano works he recorded for Erato — a body of music that had few advocates of comparable standing. His recorded solo repertoire otherwise ranged from Couperin to Ravel.

His twenty-six years directing the Marseille Conservatory gave him a second and arguably wider influence. Among the pianists who passed through his teaching were Hélène Grimaud, Philippe Cassard and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, which places him at the head of a significant line in late twentieth-century French pianism.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Barbizet
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Barbizet